Becoming Madame Mao

Meh

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I remember when I said 'meh'

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She said 'meh'

It's hard to imagine more complex subject matter. Anchee Min deserves credit for her efforts. Using the first and third person she tells the story from what may be Jaing Qing's point of view. The third person is also used to give background and historical perspective.

Min fashions not a cold hard Jaing Qing, but one who showers all her affection on her husband to the detriment of her daughter and country. She has ambition, drive and a staunchly feminist streak.

The book is strong in portraying her early life, She is fashioned as the daughter of a concubine who rebeled against foot binding. The start of her life in Shanghai as an actress named Lan Ping is well written but the narrative weakens as Min poses some ideas on how the romance with Mao was maneuvered. The narrative further weakens through the marriage. The Cultural Revolution, which culminated Jaing Qing's career/life is the least developed part.

The internal life as described here falls flat with me. Her three cohorts in the Gang of Four are hardly mentioned. The circumstances of how the Shanghai lovers perished, foreshadowed in the early part, are not revisited.

I think Min is trying to portray a warmer Jaing Qing, but with the exception of describing her love for husband and daughter, she does not develop it.

While not a smooth read, it held my interest throughout. Min deserves credit and respect for tackling such a difficult topic. For a look at what Min is capable of, I recommend "Empress Orchid". Interestingly, both books present a sympathetic portrait of their subjects, both were women in a key positions who have been judged by history to be devastating for China.

Who knew Chairman Mao was so hot?

Oh that was shameless, Mariel. Way to start off a book review! With sex! Bad, bad, bad. Historical figures shouldn't be used to write cheesey love scenes. They should be used to advertise products on tv and that's it! Anchee Min, you're shameless. Have you no shame?

I don't feel like writing two Madam Mao book reviews so I'm going to shamelessly combine reviews of this chick lit book with a review of a biography written by an Australian guy that could have been the Jim Cazaviel character in the film version of The Stoning of Soraya M.
Madame Mao: The White-Boned Demon He's super proud of himself because he's not as sexist as the men he confronts in his investigation of blatant sexism for a book that he'll be paid for writing. The men are like "Oh, why write a book about such a bad woman?" and in the movie it's like "Don't listen to that silly woman! She's a woman!" He's like, "Yes, I know. Women!" They were just as bad she was (the white-boned demon, I mean). And they are hypocrites because nothing the sexy stud muffin Mao did was bad. The men are still oh, women should have been gentle judge-y in tone. I picture a smug Jim Cazaviel face behind the pen. They were both cruel and both made lives of Chinese people more miserable than they had could have been. But why do they have to demonize the woman and erect the memory of the man as a hero? Why did the woman have to be good and it was okay for the man to be a total dick? Both authors come from a place of wanting to find out what happened and then ultimately shy away from how gross of a woman she was with the distance of evil! Get behind me, white boned demon! Why did a woman get to do this to people because Chairman Mao wanted to bone her? Was it that sly of a move to demand marriage? Isn't there an old Chinese proverb about not buying the cow when you can get the sex for free? (I was impressed how she tried to use their fear of women against them, such as removing her clothes to avoid interrogation. At least she wasn't afraid to use both sides of the sex coin. Historically it was a dull sided coin, as far as I'm concerned. Not boring to those who suffer but boring to me sitting here right now.)

Min apparently had a crush on Madam Mao aka the white-boned demon aka Jiang Ching aka Li Runqing. I had wanted to read this book because I was curious why the author had had a crush on their first lady of communism while growing up in China. I guess it was an excuse to put herself in the place of someone who had hot sex with Chairman Mao. I'm so confused! She must have made a list of everyone she didn't like, any slight or fuck over and then when she got a bit of power from the Chairman Mao sex she used it to do them in. Or she did what a lot of assholes did when communism gave them their tiny bit of evil power. Maybe the young Min had fantasies about the bitch girl who had a nicer regulation something or other than she had? Or it could have been her glamorous film career and looks before she took on the guise of a comrade. I don't know. This book doesn't have it. Why was Madam Mao interesting to Anchee Min?

What this book has is first person perspective of the lady. Self serving perspective. It was oh so romantic, this and that person fucked me over, I was the only little girl to suffer from feet binding in China (that was nasty). Maybe it was the thing about serial killers becoming serial killers become their mom was a prostitute. The perspective switches to what really happened in a regurgitation of the first. It wasn't juxtaposed reality enough to warrant the constant back and forth. The prose was cheesey as fuck either way.

I thought that Chairman Mao was hot in the sack.
Chairman Mao was hot in the sack.
It's really frustrating to read a whole book like that! (I'm going to go take a shower.)

I didn't think that her old love affairs or supposed crush on Mao made it okay. It wasn't okay that she "loved" her daughter when she wanted something from her. What was the motive to get closer to a woman like this? I think it had more to do with her notoriety, or Min wasn't good enough of a writer to express her own feelings about the maligned woman. I liked Terrill's book a bit more because at least he got that Qing was pretty much a bad actress in her own life. She'd quote lines from plays she had performed in. Maybe she didn't remember they were even plays. It was all a big lie to her to get what she wanted. Applause, money or position. She thought she identified with Ibson's A Doll's House and the world denied her her spoils. Or it was a line she repeated a lot when she didn't get anything she wanted. It sounded good the first time excuse. Chairman Mao was a position. Wouldn't most who lived in China "love" him? My father used to say to "deny, deny, deny" when confronted with a lie.It was safer (emphasis on er rather than safe) to. Qing had that part down. Never break out of character, even if it means having no character.
Or the bad writing was a demonstration of bad acting... I'm confused!

I love this author normally but this book was blah. The first half was fantastic. Around 70% it lost me. I guess the history of Chairman Mao and communism wasn't as interesting as it sounded. Although, Madam Mao was an interesting historical figure.

Žēl, ka tā arī nekādi nespēju atrast saikni ar šo romānu, jo vēsturiskajam romānam ar patiešām nozīmīgu sievieti vajadzētu būt manā gaumē. Diemžēl rakstības stils, mainot pat stāstījuma balsis, visas parr vienu un to pašu personu un vienotā laika līnijā, man patiešām nepatika . Un tam ir grūti tikt pāri. Droši vien tāpēc tā arī nesapratu, kāpēc galvenā varone vispār iepinās politikā, ko viņa devās uz to nometni, kur satika Mao un arī turpmākās viņas darbības.

Part of my Fall 2017 Best Of Chinese Literature project; more here, and a cool list of books here.

Crafty and ruthless Madame Mao bent the best artists of her generation to creating propaganda musicals during China's Cultural Revolution. The best of them - the so-called "Eight Model Works" - were extravagant operas that are still, with some degree of camp and irony, loved today. Artists gonna art, and the music was good. Apparently. I don't love musicals myself, on account of how they're dumb.

Meanwhile peasants were starving in these "collective farms," where one young girl was saved from hard labor by something called her "proletarian good looks" and cast in one of these films. Years later, this girl returns the favor by writing this fictional biography of Madame Mao. Anchee Min now lives in the US and has become one of China's mightiest writers.

Becoming Madame Mao begins around the 19teens with the binding of the future Madame's feet, and follows her all the way to her death in 1991. That's a pretty broad overview of Chinese 20th century history, and I liked that. It's my impression that Min is going easy on Madame Mao, who was a pretty nasty piece of work - not that you'll come away from this book thinking she was nice, just that you might think she's not quite as mean. Min switches incessantly between first- and third-person narration, which lets her tell the story from Madame Mao's perspective and also from a more judgmental one; it's not a super effective decision, for me. More distracting than anything else; the two perspectives aren't so different that all this switchery was necessary.

But Madame Mao's story is fascinating - a celebrity who became a politician, realizing that the same merciless social climbing strategy worked for both careers, a lifelong striver and schemer with no use for ethics. Min's a terrific writer and this is an engaging book. She's written other books about strong women - like this one dowager empress from like 1900, and her own self - and I'd check them out too. But not if they're made into musicals, because musicals are dumb.

This gets two stars instead of the one it probably deserves because it's an interesting premise. A human side to Madame Mao. But its told in three different voices -- often on the same page -- which makes it difficult to follow and not very engaging. You never get very close to the character, which is the whole point of a book like this. I read in the afterword that it took 5 years to get published, and I wonder if the publisher played around with it a lot or something. I kept thinking it read like someone wrote a synopsis for every chapter, and then decided to publish that interspersed with some first person narrative.

Anyone needing instruction on how to turn a fascinating dramatic story into something paintdryingly boring and tedious need look no further, this is how you do it. And I would also say that paint itself could pick up a few tips on how to dry less interestingly and more slowly.